The Squire discovered this morning that the pipe between the well and the house had frozen. Cute. Luckily, he had a pretty good idea where the problem was located, but fixing it was going to be tricky.
Two years ago, we had to have some work done which really needed a professional – digging up a six foot length of pipe, three feet down and replacing it. When the crew came inside they informed me that our PVC pipe did not meet code, and set in to replace a good bit of it with copper. (I think if The Squire had been home, he would have stood his ground, but I’m a wimp.) Two problems; one is our water is so acidic that it has already eaten through the copper pipes and been replaced with PVC, and two, they way they rigged up the pipes I couldn’t open the cupboard where I keep my cleaning supplies. (Not that this is a big problem, since I seldom use them, but it’s the principle of the thing.)
Anyway, to get to the point here, they had also replaced the plastic elbow outside the house, where the pipe goes through the wall, with a brass fitting, which was where the “freeze” was. This connection is encased in a little concrete bunker with a wooden lid. The Squire called every hardware store in the tri-state area, looking for heat tape, but we were obviously not the only people with frozen pipes. Finally, in desperation, he defied all the laws of good sense and ran a heavy duty extension cord out the living room window and put an electric heater inside the bunker.
Fortunately, brass heats up almost as fast as it freezes, and within fifteen minutes we were back in business.
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